It's really, really white here. it bothers me because I'm used to vancouver, where there aren't a lot of black folks but there are a lot of people of colour.
Toronto was amazing to me. I thought my head was going to fall off with all the eye contact and nod I was doing - and then my day was made pretty unpleasant when my (white) companion asked me what I was doing.
"It's something I learned from islanders," I explain. "you see a man coming or a woman coming, you look at them, they look at you, and you nod."
"But you're only doing it with black people," he complained. "you're not doing that with the white people you meet."
"that's because either the white people refuse to look at me, or if I nod at them they might take it to mean I want them to come over and bother me. I'm doing it with black people because it is something we do."
"That's racist."
Day. Ruined. My impression of the person I was walking with, tarnished (and then FURTHER tarnished when he started talking about a black woman in his social circles, and imposing all these opinions on her while saying "i'm glad *you're* not like that" and not thinking for a second to maybe check his ass. And it got worse as days went by.)
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branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2012-04-16 10:15 pm (UTC)It's really, really white here. it bothers me because I'm used to vancouver, where there aren't a lot of black folks but there are a lot of people of colour.
Toronto was amazing to me. I thought my head was going to fall off with all the eye contact and nod I was doing - and then my day was made pretty unpleasant when my (white) companion asked me what I was doing.
"It's something I learned from islanders," I explain. "you see a man coming or a woman coming, you look at them, they look at you, and you nod."
"But you're only doing it with black people," he complained. "you're not doing that with the white people you meet."
"that's because either the white people refuse to look at me, or if I nod at them they might take it to mean I want them to come over and bother me. I'm doing it with black people because it is something we do."
"That's racist."
Day. Ruined. My impression of the person I was walking with, tarnished (and then FURTHER tarnished when he started talking about a black woman in his social circles, and imposing all these opinions on her while saying "i'm glad *you're* not like that" and not thinking for a second to maybe check his ass. And it got worse as days went by.)